0:03Skip to 0 minutes and 3 secondsBob has received his essay back with feedback on it from the lecturer. The feedback says that the structure of the essay is weak, but there were no further comments on this point. Bob really doesn't understand what this means, nor what he can do to improve it for next time. He decides to go to his advisor, who goes through his essay with him and looks at the feedback that has been provided. Bob then goes off and thinks about what his advisor told him. Bob's advisor told him that his introduction was not helping him organise his essay. He was not making his opinion clear in the introduction, so he wasn't giving himself useful material to base his arguments on.

0:42Skip to 0 minutes and 42 secondsBob's advisor also looked at how Bob was trying to present his views. And he told him that there were too many passages where he was not backing up his ideas with evidence. They also looked at the structure of individual paragraphs in Bob's essay. Some of the paragraphs were not relating to Bob's opinion and the argument. The key message Bob got from his meeting with his advisor was that he needed to get more structure into his paragraphs. If he worked on individual paragraphs, then the overall structure would improve, and he wouldn't feel so overwhelmed about getting the structure of the whole essay right.

1:15Skip to 1 minute and 15 secondsBob is now inspired to have a go at his next assignment, and is working on planning the structure of each paragraph, and working out how each will relate to his opinion, which he has set out clearly in his introduction.

Seeking help with feedback

Feedback on assignments is one of the points where you get personal attention on the work you produce. This is because many university classes are very large and you won’t get much individual help unless you actively seek it out. It is really important to be able to understand what is meant by the feedback and how to act on it.